Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Or an in-person interview.

They're wearing casual clothes, their shirt's not tucked in.

They're just not been trained in the same way in this remote society.

You know, 50% of the students have a difficult time, according to the employers, maintaining eye contact in a conversation.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Robert and Leila.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating with our guest for today, Curtis Butler, all the way from the East Coast.

He has 30 years worth of experience in the finance industry, including working for JP Morgan.

However, he has switched to helping young professionals, their career choices, job interview prep, and most importantly, what we emphasize on this show, which is soft skills.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, Curtis.

Hello, Arboretta.

Thank you very much.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, it's my pleasure to have you as well.

Welcome.

Please tell our listeners a little bit about you.

Sure.

Well, as you mentioned, I'm from the US.

I'm from upstate New York, a large family that spent my education in the US and overseas and then found myself in the finance industry for more than three decades, during which time I took a great interest in helping younger people.

It was my younger colleagues or college students from the schools I went to, just helping them make their way in the world.

And since I've been doing so much of it, I decided just to make it permanent thing, to make it my life's work.

So I started a company this year, Guided Ascent Career Coaching, to do just that.

Because what we're finding out is that graduate outcomes, so what happens to college students when they join the workforce, are actually quite challenging these days.

That only one out of every two college graduates is finding a job that requires their college degree.

And part of what's missing, it has a lot to do with what's happened in our culture and with technology, is exactly what you referred to at the opening, which is the lack of soft skills and the lack of opportunity to build those soft skills.

Because the way we communicate has changed so dramatically.

Young people today do most of their communicating like this.

Right.

And so there's not enough engagement opportunity with the professional world with grownups.

So when it comes time to interview for jobs, very often young people today aren't really prepared.

So I help them not only determine what career path makes the most sense for them based on what they love and what they're good at, but also then how to bridge that gap between living like a college student, talking like a college student, right?

Engaging that way to what is required in the business world, what is required in the professional world.

Right.

And you made such a good point because there's such a distinction now.

I'm 48.

So when I entered the workforce, there was no technology, there was no Google.

My boss knew everything according to the rest of us.

You know what I mean?

It was a very different dynamic and the way we communicated as well.

The fact that we grew up playing in the streets.

And when you fight with your friend, your parents will help you guys sort that issue out and you learn to resolve the conflict.

Those are the soft skills we developed as kids.

So even the way they are growing up, they are at a disadvantage when it comes to that.

Yes, I agree 100 percent.

The way young people grow up today is entirely different.

As you noted, when we were coming of age, when we were going to school, there was no internet, there were no mobile phones.

Right?

So it's an entirely different world.

Everything was communicating.

Again, if you were looking for even an internship, it was writing letters.

It was really having to express ourselves in a more thorough way with the adult world.

As opposed to today, everything is so immediate, and you can very quickly send off an email without a lot of thinking.

And unfortunately, that's what happens too often.

So I really do work with young people to help them.

I don't write things for them.

I help them understand what is the purpose of what they're writing.

It's about telling their story and how to make their story compelling enough for the person on the other side to be engaged, first of all, and second, to want to hire them.

So it's about thinking about their communication with the professional world in a very different way, and teaching them how to tell their own story, their personal narrative, which is completely new to most young people.

The idea of someone saying, tell me about yourself, which is how so many interviews start.

Most people don't even know where to go.

So I teach them how to pull together and how to even think about their own story, and then pull together a narrative that makes the person across the table understand, oh, that's how you got to this meeting, and it makes all the sense in the world that you're here.

So I tell people all the time, you can actually win an interview in the first five minutes.

If you're able to check all those boxes just by telling your one minute story, the kind of person you are, what kind of values you have, the way you grew up, the choices that you've made, more important than the job you just had.

And so it's a new way to think about how to communicate your own story, how to think about what you want to tell the outside world, what you want to tell the professional world about yourself.

It's eye opening for a lot of people.

I was actually just speaking with a student this morning who said, Curtis, I can't believe the way the wheels are turning right now.

I'm thinking about my resume in a completely different way.

Most people think of the resume as a list of the things they've done.

Like a LinkedIn profile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's not meant to be that.

It's my one look at you if you're lucky enough to get an interview.

So show me your story and don't tell me where you worked.

Tell me what you did and what you learned.

And that really helps me understand, wow, this person is road ready.

This person is ready for this role.

So that's a lot of the work that we do that also helps these students and recent graduates stand out from the crowd, because that what we've just described and just discussed for all the reasons we discussed.

They're not taught, they're not practiced as much as they could be and as much as they used to be.

I'm wondering when they say a lot of them don't even know what their story is or how to tell it.

If you think about because of technology, there's so much noise and there's so much of, I'm not saying the answer is to be conforming like we used to be in our generation, but I find that everything is just how do we rebel against this or how do we become different from what we hear.

There's so much of TikTok, whatever it is.

And so that's why I think a lot of young people now struggle with even asking themselves, what do I believe in?

Like I said, what are your values?

Who am I?

Because there's just so many voices, which we didn't have.

One hundred percent.

And young people today are just as smart as young people were when we were growing up.

Probably smarter.

But they don't have the opportunity or don't take the opportunity because of what you said, the voices are distractions.

Right.

The unfortunate fact is that social media is designed to distract young people.

It's designed to keep them on it.

And we've all observed, I have two teenagers, we've all observed it.

They are on it all the time.

That can have benefits, of course, and there's engagement and there's inter-connectivity that's wonderful.

But obviously, we're aware of the downside.

But the downside, I think, that you and I are referring to is that there are fewer opportunities to stop and think, to stop and ponder.

Right?

When I was a young person, when I was a teenager, and there was no place I was meant to be or homework was done, we didn't really do a lot of TV watching in my house.

But if, let's say, I wanted to make the choice to watch TV, and my parents are like, yeah, the TV is off, then what?

Then I'd be sitting in my room.

What am I going to do?

I'm going to draw.

I guess I'm going to read a book.

Maybe a book I've already read because I enjoy it, but there's more thoughtful slowing down, and I don't hold it against the kids.

It's really the way the culture has changed, and it's extremely difficult for them to pull themselves away.

So I offer them an opportunity, a safe space, to say it's just us now.

Let's talk.

Let's figure out who you are and what you really want.

I've had this conversation so many times because young people have a lot of pressure on them.

They listen to what their parents say.

their parents give them wonderful advice.

They care so much about them.

They listen to what their friends are doing, what other people tell them they should do, and might not take enough time to sit and say, wait a second, who am I, as you said?

What do I want to do?

And I dig into that with them.

And let's figure out where your passions lie, what you really love, what you dream about doing when you're 30, and how do we get you there?

Is it possible?

Okay, you're probably not going to play in the NBA, but let's come up with something a little bit more realistic.

So we start with what you love, and then we now blend it with what your skills are, what you're good at, what's possible.

And not even what's probable, like, let's go for it.

You're going to tell a much more compelling story.

You're going to be much more enthusiastic in those interviews if it's for a job or a career that you truly love.

So that's where we start.

Yes, it reminds me of the movie Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams.

I don't know if you watched it back in the 80s.

I have.

I mean, kind of a tough ending, but it's a great story.

Yes.

I think I cried two times.

The ending also, was it Neil Perry's story?

Tragic ending as well, because his dad was forcing him not to do the acting that he loved so much and when it was in his element.

And like you said, a lot of parents.

Yes.

A lot of parents say that thinking it's the best interest of the kid.

The economy is tough.

Acting is not going to pay the bills, but being a doctor, well, you know, that's where they come from.

So to have career guidance coaches like you will help maybe also in those situations.

The parents come from the right place.

They care so much about their children.

They don't want them to fail.

Conversely, they want them to succeed.

So that's where that comes from.

But what I try to help guide students and young people with is there's lots of paths to success.

Let's open up the conversation, right?

This is just you and me.

Let's open up the conversation and figure this out.

And so many times, again, mom and dad are giving them great advice, and they have their whole lives.

Well, let's bring in a new perspective and maybe add to that advice.

And let's see what we can come up with together.

And so often, it's just really eye-opening.

They finally realize, I can do that.

I've always felt like that was just a pipe dream, but why is it?

I actually have enough skill to do what I love.

Let's make that happen.

That's the guiding that I do.

Right.

Let's go back to the communication aspect of it.

I had a guest who was in HR for over 20 years.

And she says one of the downsides to this generation growing up with so much technology and just texting and things are abbreviated is that even during the interview process, because some companies, it's an entire process.

It's your resume.

It's the first step, the second interview and whatnot.

Is that sometimes they would say things like, why are you asking me this?

It's already in my resume.

Wow.

Because they grew up in the culture of so many shortcuts and just shorter attention spans, and everything is quick.

And therefore, if they've given you the resume, why are you asking you should have read it?

first of all, a lot of interview panelists say they don't read the whole resume.

Eight seconds tops.

So they obviously haven't.

To them, it doesn't put you in the right frame.

And for them to perceive you that way that, you know, they're just asking for information and you go, but I've already given you my resume.

What more do you want?

But at the same time, as I said, it's because they're just growing up in this culture where everything is just chop, chop, chop.

I think you make a great point.

And what is a little bit surprising perhaps to my generation is the feedback that we hear from employers.

So I've done a lot of research before starting this company about graduate outcomes and what employers are saying and what the students are saying and where some of the gaps might be.

And so much of it is in the leadership communication.

And in some of these surveys, employers have said as much as 35 percent of the students failed to come to the interview properly dressed.

So it's a Zoom call like this or an in-person interview.

They're wearing casual clothes, their shirt's not tucked in.

They've just not been trained in the same way in this remote society, right?

Unfortunately, since COVID, it's not been the same training, frankly, because those in-person conversations have not taken place as much as they used to.

And in fairness to this generation, the students that graduated in 2024, graduated from college, were high school seniors in the US when COVID hit.

Yes.

So they were really short-changed.

They lost their senior year and their freshman year of college.

These are really important developmental times when they could have been having those engagements and building that experience.

And since then, we went from everything being in-person to most interviews now taking place across the screen, and they're just not properly trained for it.

So we work a lot on that.

You know, 50% of the students have a difficult time, according to the employers, maintaining eye contact in a conversation.

Again, nothing wrong with these young people.

It's just inexperience.

It's lack of practice.

So once we recognize what those gaps are that the employers are seeing and the employers are struggling with, we can bridge them.

It's the culture that creates all the stuff that we're talking about right now.

And one pandemic.

Yes.

Hopefully, it doesn't come back.

That's right.

And then the thing is, when you do talk to the employers, what also do they say is lacking when it comes?

So we've talked about how unable to write letters.

You know, because we used to say, dear Mr.

Butler, here with, please find that nobody does that.

I mean, you know what I mean?

Besides that, besides not maintaining eye contact and not showing up in the interviews, being presentable, what are the challenges, especially working in teams as well, do they face in the workplace, which sometimes leads to them not lasting or not staying in a certain organization for much longer?

I appreciate that question.

I think it's a generation that's very casual.

And sometimes when they, particularly when they join larger organizations or industries that are slightly more formal, like the one I came from, finance or consulting, it can be a struggle as when you're 23 or 22 years old, to join some of that rigidity, bureaucracy.

Again, as you mentioned, there's no bureaucracy on the Internet.

Everything is super speedy, efficient.

If you like it, you stick with it.

If you don't like it, you're gone.

So that can be those strictures of formal adult society, can be challenging for young people today.

And again, I understand that, and corporate America needs to adapt to that as well.

Corporate America can't stay rigid and say, young people just need to become like us.

They all kind of need to get closer to the middle because the culture has changed, and the way we engage has changed.

The way we dress has changed.

When I started in business, it was suit and tie every single day, period.

Even for interviews, I was about to say, if you didn't have a suit, you'll ask your friend or sister who has a suit.

That's right.

And now, even at JP Morgan, we stopped wearing suits.

There were no ties because we were competing with Google and Microsoft who didn't wear ties.

So to attract young people, we had to be more flexible.

So I think we're continuing to find our way as a business in America.

What works?

We can give a little bit on the formality and still be very successful.

The biggest challenge is for the young people today to adapt to the formality when they just have not had the practice.

So like you said, meet in the middle, learn some formality, but also the older generation.

I also had a guest who's a leadership coach and she said, she sometimes advises her clients who are in the mid-40s, mid-50s, who've been in leadership for a while, to say, get yourself a 25-year-old mentor, because you have this old style type of leadership, they're going to get you up to speed with what's going on right now, because we do encourage leaders to be flexible enough and be agile, go with the times while being productive and making sure that the outcomes are met.

Yes.

I think that's a wonderful point.

I just had another conversation this week where this exact issue came up.

I used to always look above for my life lessons, people who have been around a lot longer.

They have so much to teach me.

I gravitated to them like a magnet.

And now I'm learning, I have an apprentice who's working with me this summer.

And I'm now learning, I have teenagers who teach me something every day.

But I have someone in her mid-20s working with me, helping build my company, and very importantly, helping build my social media presence.

And what's interesting is not only is she teaching me about social media and how it's perceived, but she's actually a terrific strategist, helping me think about my business from the perspective of a new generation.

And I've told her this, I said, you are just the best sounding board for my business strategy.

It was the wake up call.

I need 20-somethings to help me be more successful.

Not just because my business targets young people, but because they bring an entirely new brand of thinking, which I really respect and appreciate.

I've always been a person who respects people in the professional realm, students.

I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy the coaching.

We're able to build trust because I respect them.

Even at 17 years old, I show them a lot of respect because they're independent human beings with their own minds, their own views, and I want to hear them.

But I'm really learning right now how savvy the younger generation really is and how they have so much to teach us.

Absolutely.

It reminds me, you know, how back in our day, you'd register for a strategic management course.

Now just call up a young person.

Exactly.

Just a shortened MBA.

That's right.

You know, we even advise leaders to get a young mentor because we do respect the fact that they're on the ground.

They know what's going on much more than somebody sitting in a 27th floor office and has been there since 20 years ago.

So yes, we certainly, certainly do welcome their contributions.

When it comes to soft skills as well, is there anything else that you do emphasize when it comes to coaching them?

Yes.

So what the employers really are looking for, and they're not finding as much as they would like, is that confident conveyance of a sense of leadership and professional communication.

There's a slang that young people use today.

We always, every generation has its own slang.

But there's a comfort or lack of formality in those conversations, so the slang comes through, you know, the like.

American young people, it's like this and it's like that.

And again, young people are very adaptive.

So when I make them aware of it and we focus on it, it can go away.

It's the right question.

What else can they do from a communication perspective?

One of the biggest challenges is that young people tend to speak very quickly, especially with each other.

And this habit of just really rattling things off very quickly.

And again, this is a generational thing, no fault of their own.

But I say, if we slow down, not only will you have more time to think about your answer, but you will grab my attention just by slowing down, just by allowing for that one or two second pause.

And I can tell they react.

I think, wow, that works, that really works.

Suddenly the air changed.

Completely.

And now I've really got your attention.

So what I'm going to say next, you're really going to hear.

But what tends to happen is the answer just comes so quickly, and they just keep talking and talking and talking, and then nothing sinks in.

So we work a lot on that, on effective speech.

And part of effective speech, probably a major part of effective speech, is taking your time, allowing yourself to emphasize what's really important, and having those, I think all those pregnant pauses, that have the audience leaning forward in their seats.

It really does help in an interview, because I will truly be listening.

And I find that when I'm mock interviewing students, or just kind of telling story after story, going on and on for a couple of minutes, I don't even hear it anymore.

So that's something we work on as well.

On the show as well, we emphasize public speaking, presentation skills, because as you said, those are the skills that also help you accelerate your career.

Because if we are both fresh graduates and we enter the corporate world during the same team, and our boss asks us and says, Curtis, go ahead and make a presentation to that potential customer, show them what we do.

And he said, but I'm afraid to speak in front of people.

And I take the chance.

I look good.

And I took the leadership you mentioned earlier versus you just saying, oh my goodness, I can never stand in front of people.

Because if I've trained myself to speak, take those pauses, be able to make a presentation and explain my point, it puts me at an advantage compared to some other person.

Yeah.

And look people in the eye, right?

Engage them properly, directly.

It makes a huge difference.

And I will admit when I was young, I was afraid if you asked me to go out there and talk on stage, I would have been anxious about that as well.

I think it's fair to say everyone starts out that way.

There are very few natural public speakers.

So what's the only remedy?

Practice.

Always.

And my wife is also a big public speaker.

If you said to either of us, we need you to go talk to this crowd of 500 people for the next half hour, talk about whatever you want, each of us would say, okay, because we can, right?

We have the practice.

So I work on that.

I say often, the key to a successful interview, the most impressive way to present yourself in an interview is something I call confident humility.

And it's going to be kind of a foundation of a book that I will eventually publish about mentoring and coaching.

But confident humility means you come across with confidence that you believe your skills are sufficient and you have the experience required to excel in the role.

But the humility to recognize, I'm young, I still have a lot to learn, and I would be honored to work for such a prestigious company and to learn from you.

That combination is very powerful.

Because if you think about not having that balance, if a young person comes across as too confident, it's a turnoff.

You're only 22.

Doesn't it start in the teenage years, Curtis, where people say, I know everything?

Yes.

And it starts a lot earlier than that.

I think at least I've been experiencing that.

But I've known through my own experience and I've had to tell people this.

Say that you come off as too confident for someone who hasn't ever worked, right?

And that's not your fault.

But remember, the people you're talking to have a lot to teach you.

You want to make it very clear to them that you're excited and you're eager and you have a lot to learn.

But I think the experiences that I've accumulated and the skills that I've developed will be very helpful for you from the first day I join.

But I'm here to learn, right?

I'm going to pour my energy into this to do exactly what the firm requires to help you succeed because if I make my boss look good, it works out for me.

Exactly.

I guess I would add one other critically important soft skill, which is formal writing.

You said that earlier.

No one writes, you know, herewith.

I enclose my resume.

Attach please fine.

Yes.

And that's fine that one could see that as a little too formal these days.

But I find that one of the rarest skills nowadays is proper written expression.

Again, it combines with that storytelling.

What do you really want to say with this cover letter?

And very often, the cover letters are usually twice as long as they need to be for two reasons.

One, you need to be able to come up with a concise way to say why you're the right person for the job and how excited you would be to have it.

But also thinking very clearly about what's the most important information for me to convey.

I'm not meant to tell them everything.

What do they really want to know about me?

Or what will impress them about me?

And be able to say that in few words.

So I find myself cutting most cover letters in half, and just keeping it super simple.

With the added benefit, I just posted this on LinkedIn recently.

I've been putting up posts pretty regularly.

But with the added benefit of you're showing a lot of respect for the reader, who has limited time and has to look at a lot of these things.

So when I see a cover letter that's three paragraphs long and short, as opposed to six dense paragraphs, I say, wow, this person gets the drill.

This person understands.

Just get to the point.

And I appreciate it.

And I will recognize that, like, this is what I want to read.

I don't want to go through that mini book.

There's 10,000 other people with same cover letters.

Yes.

Exactly.

That's right.

One last thing on listening skills, Curtis.

What have you found in this new generation when it comes to listening skills?

I'm impressed with today's young people because I'm 30 to 35 years older than most of them.

And I'm impressed despite everything we've said about the challenges, the way the culture has changed, the informality of it.

I'm impressed that, like I said, they're just as smart as any young people ever were, maybe smarter.

I'm impressed by how respectful and adaptive they are.

When we talk about steps to take, they take them.

They're very open to the advice of a veteran.

That's why I really enjoy working with young people.

They don't come with the baggage that mid-career folks might.

They recognize, okay, this guy does know what he's talking about.

He's done this a lot.

He's helped a lot of young people, and now they're in really good jobs.

I'm going to do what he says.

And like you said, you were even during your corporate career in finance, you were mentoring some of the young people who would come to work in the companies you worked for at the time.

So you've been doing this even in the 30 years that you were in corporate.

Yes, I think I figured that out.

I always enjoyed helping people.

I think that was how I was raised, and my wife is the same, so we were a good match.

But I had a teaching job in graduate school, and I realized, wow, I love this.

I love this, imparting what I know to help someone else.

So I've been doing that, as you said, my whole career with students, but with young professionals, because you used the word a moment ago.

It's about listening.

It's not about bragging about all of your accomplishments.

That's not why they want to have coffee.

They want to have coffee because you may have a different perspective.

The lens of your experience allows you to have a unique perspective on their experience.

When I would have coffee with people at my company or someone would come into my office and say, do you have a minute?

Always.

And it would say, how can I help you?

What can we do to get you where you want to go?

And that requires confidence, right?

On the part of the mentor, right?

Thinking, helping this person is only good for me, and anything that helps someone else helps me.

It makes me a better person.

It makes me more whole.

So I think that the listening is so important.

Hearing truly what someone wants, what someone needs, what advice they are actually seeking.

I'm reminded by my daughter, my 15-year-old, like about unsolicited advice.

So again, learning from young people, right?

I'm going to remember where, what's my place?

Where is my advice wanted?

And where do I need to just step back?

Those are all incredible skills that I'm still learning, but I apply to my work for sure.

Being confidently humble.

Thank you so much, Curtis Butler, the founder of Guided Ascent Career Coaching with over 30 years in finance, who is helping this young generation navigate their careers and be successful.

Thank you so much.

This has been a wonderful conversation.

I'm glad that you were here today.

Thank you, Roberta.

I really enjoyed it.

My absolute pleasure.

Before you go, please tell our listeners where to find you on the socials and your website as well.

Sure thing.

So I'm just Curtis Butler on LinkedIn.

I've just started posting on Instagram as well.

I think it's Curtis A.

Butler.

And my website is a very simple one to remember.

It's jobreadygrads.com.

jobreadygrads.com.

Curtis Butler on LinkedIn.

Curtis A.

Butler on Instagram.

Thank you so much.

And please continue with the work that you're doing.

It's very, very much needed.

Thank you very much.

My pleasure.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking on Communicating Podcast once again.

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